


Loose Ends

by DoubleApple



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Fluff and Smut, Grief/Mourning, International Fanworks Day 2016, M/M, awwww our poor sad guys, the kiss, yes THAT kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-17 19:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5882191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleApple/pseuds/DoubleApple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Simon gives Baz his mum's kiss, and his mum comes back for a brief moment. (Maybe.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Kiss, Redux

**Author's Note:**

> I'm convinced RR left the actual kiss delivery out of the book so that we could all write a million different versions of it here. :)
> 
> This takes place before the epilogue, in a slightly different AU where Simon & Baz stay at Watford for a few days after the battle in the White Chapel.

**SIMON**

  
“There’s something else, Baz,” I say, clearing my throat. We’re in our room, maybe for the last time, sitting together on my bed. I don’t really know how to do this but I feel like I have to, while we're still here.  
  
“Your mother—when she visited,” I start again. He goes very still.  
  
“I told you everything she said, and I know I told you that she kissed me, but she wanted me to _give_ it to you. Not just tell you,” I explain.  
  
“Okay,” he says slowly, trying to hide the intensity that rises to the surface whenever his mother comes up. I’m sitting very close to him and I move even closer, facing him. His eyes shine in the dim light, guarded and half-lidded, wary.  
  
“I didn’t know how, before—I couldn’t… I mean, okay, yeah, so I guess it was like this.”  
  
I lean over and kiss his forehead briefly, just where the ghost of his mother kissed me.  
  
He closes his eyes and touches a hand to his forehead. “How did it feel?”  
  
“It felt… cold. Really cold. But I could tell that she meant it. She loved you, Baz.”  
  
“Okay,” he says again, sounding small, a shadow of the boy who lost his mum crossing over him. Crowley, he just looks so sad. I lean over to kiss him again, on the forehead, in the same place, just because.  
  
And suddenly, a little rush of freezing air sweeps through me, something tingling and electric. I feel it rise to my lips when they touch him, but he feels it more—he jumps, somehow keeping my lips pressed to him.  
  
He gasps a little and clamps his hand around my wrist, keeping me where I am.  
  
“Wait…” he whispers, and the cold intensifies. I feel a bit scared; I don’t know what’s happening. Baz’s eyes are closed. He puts his other hand over his mouth.  
  
The cold feeling dims, replaced by warm air rushing back into the room. Baz lets go of my hand and lets me pull away, but the rest of his body is rigid.  
  
“What was that?” he asks, still whispering. I think he’s on the verge of tears.  
  
“I—I don’t know,” I say, reaching for his hands.  
  
Baz is starting to shake all over. His hands, his mouth, his whole body.  
  
“That was her, wasn’t it. I heard her voice. She was here.”  
  
“I don’t know, Baz. I didn’t hear anything.”  
  
“It was! It was, Simon. _Simon_. Do it again. Please.”  
  
I can already tell that this won’t work, but how can I deny him the chance to try again? I put my lips back on his forehead. Nothing. He pulls away.  
  
“How did that happen? Was it magic? Is your magic back?” He’s beginning to sound frantic and his eyes are going a little wild.  
  
“No, Baz, I don’t think so. It didn’t feel… it didn’t feel like magic." But I’m not sure. I don’t know what that was.

He pulls out his wand and starts casting spells, one after the other, trying to get her back.

_**“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”** _

_**“Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me.”** _

_**“What you see is what you get.”** _

_**“Catch me if you can.”** _

_**“I want to be in the room where it happens.”** _

Eventually, he simply casts, ** _“come back.”_** I don't even know if that's actually a spell or if he’s just asking the empty air.

My skin tingles hard with his magic, cool and fresh and dusky, like a forest floor, but there's no dramatic freezing gust. No sign of his mother.

He gives up and jams his wand in his pocket, and starts pacing around our little room.  

I try again: “I don’t know, Baz. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t give you her kiss earlier.” I feel helpless. “I don’t know the rules of this. But it didn’t… it didn’t feel like the Visitation, I don’t think. It wasn’t as clear as that.”

He's stalking through the room just like he did when I first told him. It feels like a million years ago now. He stops at the window.

"This is where she was?" he demands, almost glaring at me, another shadow of old Baz. "Right here?"

I nod. “The first time, yeah.”

He looks out across the grounds for a minute and I think he's getting his composure back, but then all at once he smacks the window with his flat palm, hard, furious, and gives a painful shout. He crumples to the floor, pulls up his knees, and twists his hands in his hair, pulling. It looks like it hurts and I rush over and grab him.

He lets out one strangled sob.

“Fucking numpties,” he mumbles into my shirt. “I can’t believe they kept me from her. I should have been here. She was right here. I should have been able to talk to her.”  
  
“I know, Baz. I know. I’m sorry.” I wish I had the right words to say to him. I never have the right words, somehow. I smooth my hands over his, tangled into his hair.  
  
He wipes his eyes and sits up a bit.  
  
“Crowley, Snow, I shouldn’t act like this around you. At least I had a family that loved me the best they could, even if they aren’t really up to the task. And I slept in my own bed, and had enough food to eat. _You_ …” His voice cracks on the word.  
  
I smile a little and pull him back toward me. “We’re both pathetic. But being able to remember your mum probably makes it worse; I don’t remember a thing.”  
  
As I’m saying it, though, something twitches at the back of my mind. That’s not entirely true. There’s something there, buried deep. A voice, a name… something. But I shove it aside as a fresh wave of tears comes over Baz and I hold him tighter, gripping his shoulders and his arms, whatever part of him I can reach.


	2. In Process

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Baz and Simon are really, really sad. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy International Fanworks Day! And happy Valentine's Day, too.

**BAZ  
**

Fucking numpties. Fucking vampires. _Fuck_ them. Fuck _everything_. I’m so fucking sad and I’m so fucking sick of it. But I can’t stop crying.

 

  **SIMON**

“I’m here, love. I’m here.” I smooth his hair, rub my hands over his shoulders and back. I rest my hand on the back of his neck and he grips mine too, pressing his forehead against mine. My wings are spelled invisible right now, but I can feel them move around both of us, like they’re trying to pull us in and protect us in a giant cocoon.

I wish there was something, anything I could say. He’s crying in earnest now, like he’s shattering apart. I feel an ache in my own throat, and something lower, down deep. “Shh, Baz, shh. I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.”

Still sobbing, he pulls his head away from mine. “You almost weren’t,” he whispers, his face contorted by tears. He presses his lips together and takes a shuddering breath, looking away from me, trying to get control.

“Wasn’t what, Baz?”

“Here.” He meets my eyes again; he looks terrified. “When I saw the Mage collapse on you, I thought you were gone. I thought he’d killed you.”

“Baz—” I try to interrupt. It feels too soon to talk about this, somehow. And I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too new, too raw. 

“No,” he barks, his voice harsh and his beautiful long hands clamped over his face. “No. I have to tell you. You need to know this about me.”

He’s crying so hard he almost can’t talk, but he tries to take a deep breath. 

“When I thought the Mage had killed you, Simon, I was going to kill him. I _wanted_ to kill him. I was going to bite, to tear him apart with my teeth. I would have tortured him, turned him, for taking you away from me. I would have nothing to lose. I’m disgusting. I’m a monster.”

“You are not, Baz, it’s okay—”

“It’s not! It’s not okay, Simon. What if I lose it and go completely mad? What if I bite _you_ someday? What if I turn you too?”

“You won’t! Baz, you won’t,” I say, holding him against me hard. But even as the words are coming out, I think the objection: I don’t know that, I _can’t_ know it. What happens if I cut myself someday in front of him, badly, so there’s real blood, and I’m not wearing my cross? What happens the first time we have a real fight, or the first time we finally do more than snog? I can’t know what he’ll do, no more than he can.

Bloody hell. I can’t say all that. I never have the right words.

“I don’t care,” I whisper instead. “Go ahead, turn me. I don’t care. I really don’t.”

He leans against me and I feel him shaking his head, like a stubborn little kid, and I get a flash of the boy he once was. The one with no mum, who’d been turned into a monster and whose cold, grieving father couldn’t face him. He had no one. No one. And I see the lonely man he is going to be—a vampire who doesn’t know if he’s truly alive or dead, and who may be immortal, who might someday have to watch everyone he loves die. His future is almost as terrifying as his past. 

He’s still shaking against me, resisting, and I know I have to try more words. I have to swallow down the ache in my throat before I can talk.

“It’s okay, Baz. I—I would have wanted to do the same thing, for you. I would have wanted to kill the Mage with my bare hands if he’d hurt you.” I _did_ sort of kill the Mage with my bare hands. But I don’t want to think about that.

“Baz,” I try again. “I’m here. I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Finally, he gives in and relaxes against me again, crying in earnest again. And I’m about to start crying now too, the ache my throat threatening to overtake my voice, so I just circle my arms tighter around him, pulling him into me so he’s practically in my lap. He’s still shaking. Oh, Baz. 

We stay this way for a while. I don’t know how long, 10 or 15 minutes, maybe longer, until he seems to wind down a bit.

“You can’t mean that, Snow,” he mumbles into my chest.

“Mean what?”

“The bit about me turning you.”

“I absolutely mean it,” I say, and I realize it’s completely true. “We’d be together forever. Not like some shite Valentine ‘forever.’ Like, _for real_ forever.”

I think I feel him smile against me—finally, my words have come out right, so I keep going: “We could come back to Watford and live in the catacombs and hunt rats all night. Or we could move to London and knock over butcher shops together. And we could get Nicodemus as a flatmate. We’d save so much money on electric bills.”

Baz actually gives a low little laugh, a beautiful sound. Thank Merlin.

He takes a deep breath and stands up from our awkward pile on the floor, and the cold air hits me in the space where his body was. I realize how warm he was when we were tangled together.

He goes over to his chest of drawers, opens the top one, and reaches in for one of his infernal handkerchiefs. He blows his nose, then takes another clean one out of the drawer and walks back over to me, kneeling down and swiping at my jumper. 

“I’ve made a mess of you, Snow,” he says with a shaky smile. “I’m sorry.”

_I’m sorry._

There are too many echoes in this room tonight. Baz turns back to the other side of the room, too far away, and suddenly I’m back in the White Chapel, when everything was over and the Mage had fallen on top of me, hearing Baz saying it over and over. 

_I’m sorry, Simon, I’m sorry, get up, please, Simon, get up, I’m sorry._

I remember thinking, distantly, what’s he got to be sorry for? 

And now I remember, for the first time, the sound Baz made when he flew over to us. It was inhuman, crazed, a sound of mourning and terror. I think he was keening. I gasp out loud, remembering it; I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t stop. Hearing it echo in my brain sends a scared shiver through me and a sob slips through.

Baz turns around when he hears me and I see his red eyes widen as he comes back over to me on the floor. He brings his hand to my cheek, his face serious and worried, and brushes a tear away. Then he catches one on the other side, with the tip of his tongue. 

“Fucking numpties,” he whispers for the millionth time, pulling me to him so that now it’s my face pressed into his shoulder. “Now look what they’ve done.”

I try to smile so he knows I’m okay, but now I can’t be okay because now I keep hearing his terrible keening sound over and over in my head, and then I’m picturing Baz dead—dead in the tower with the Mage, dead alone in a forest somewhere, or worse, _not_ dead when I am dead and so is everyone else, just in some kind of eternal in-between nothing place. Can Baz even die? It’s horrible and I’m scared and now I’m the one who can’t stop sobbing. Now I’m shattering apart.

Baz holds me close, his hand on the back of my neck.

I hate crying, I hate this. My bloody wings try to fold around us again and I bat one of them away, I’m so angry—but that’s all there is. Just anger, no magic. I won’t go off, not now or ever. I’ll never learn to harness it properly, because there’s nothing there. No magic for me, ever again. Fuck.

I can't breathe. I pull back from Baz, just to see his face. I need to see his face. 

He catches the anger in my eyes and starts to say something, all tenderness and caring, and no, fuck, no, I have to feel something, anything, besides this. 

And suddenly my body responds with so much force, it takes my slow stupid brain a few seconds to catch up. I mash myself into him and slam him against the wall, crushing his face into mine. I snog him and snog him, lips and breath and tongues and teeth and _yes, fuck, yes_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly can't tell if this is working, and the writing is a lot trickier for me than my first fic! Sexytime stuff is easier for me to write, somehow, and that's what's coming in Chapter 3... let me know what you think?


End file.
